The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Bronze Hand, by
Anna Katharine Green (Mrs. Charles Rohlfs)

This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or
re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org

Title: The Bronze Hand
1897

Author: Anna Katharine Green (Mrs. Charles Rohlfs)

Release Date: September 29, 2007 [EBook #22806]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE BRONZE HAND ***

Produced by David Widger

THE BRONZE HAND

By Anna Katharine Green (Mrs. Charles Rohlfs)

Copyright, 1897, by Anna Katharine Green

I. THE FASCINATING UNKNOWN.

HER room was on the ground floor of the house we mutually inhabited,
and mine directly above it, so that my opportunities for seeing her were
limited to short glimpses of her auburn head as she leaned out of the
window to close her shutters at night or open them in the morning. Yet
our chance encounter in the hall or on the walk in front, had made so
deep an impression upon my sensibilities that I was never without the
vision of her pale face set off by the aureole of reddish brown hair,
which, since my first meeting with her, had become for me the symbol of
everything beautiful, incomprehensible and strange.

For my fellow-lodger was a mystery.

I am a busy man now, but just at the time of which I speak, I had
leisure in abundance.

I was sharing with many others the unrest of the perilous days
subsequent to the raid of John Brown at Harper's Ferry. Abraham Lincoln
had been elected President. Baltimore, where the incidents I am relating
transpired, had become the headquarters of men who secretly leagued
themselves in antagonism to the North. Men and women who felt that their
Northern brethren had grievously wronged them planned to undermine the
stability of the government. The schemes at this time were gigantic
in their conception and far-reaching in their scope and endless
ramifications.

Naturally under these conditions, a consciousness of ever-present danger
haunted every thinking mind. The candor of the outspoken was regarded
with doubt, and the reticence of the more cautious, with distrust. It
was a trying time for sensitive, impressionable natures with nothing to
do. Perhaps all this may account for the persistency with which